The Storycatcher (24 page)

Miss Hollywood behind her dark glasses stepped toward me. “Ada, I’m Lydia, Tyson’s sister.” She held out her hand. Them fingers of hers looked like they might snap in two. Everything about Miss Hollywood made me think of those thin teacups Mrs. Tyson kept in the sideboard, gathering dust after years of never being used.

Without thinking much about it—and that wasn’t like me—I took her hand in mine and shook it. “Yes, ma’am, we met a long time ago, when you was a young thing.” She was just a slip of a girl in a woman’s body.

“You remember me, Ada?” She said this like no one cared after her. She turned toward the little white girl. “This is Faith, my daughter.”

Now, something about that name released into the air made me let go of Miss Lydia’s hand. When I looked at this Faith, I seen more stirring around in that head of hers than I wanted to know about. Two girls brooding in the same skin. One was pale with dark eyes in a blue-eyed family, fading in and out. The other girl came from a hardworking life and sly. Lord, she was sly like a fox or maybe a weasel. Time would tell just who would be the owner of that pitiful body. I heard tell of people with several spirits inside of them. This girl was one.

“You want to walk through the house and get acquainted?” I offered Miss Lydia. That’s when I saw her, Miss Mary Beth Clark, standing on the landing of the second floor. “Go take a look around.” I nodded to Miss Lydia. When they walked by and got out of earshot, I turned to the colored girl. “I be Ada.”

“I’m Shelly Parker.” She watched the spirit, trying not to keep her eyes on it.

“This is the first time I’ve been back here since she died.” I spoke low. Something quiet grew inside of me without a name or a face, like a dern old kudzu vine choking out the pretty with its fat green leaves. “You can stay with me at night.” I watched this girl with interest. Something about her was almost familiar, like I ought to have known exactly who she was and what she wanted in Darien.

She turned that look of hers away from the haint. “I guess.”

“Well, you can’t be staying on the Ridge at night, child. You be colored. You can come home with me. I got me a place in town for weeknights and then on the weekends, like tonight, we’ll head on back to Sapelo Island. You ain’t never seen nothing, nothing like it.”

“Shelly can just stay with us at night here, Ada.” Miss Lydia stood halfway up them stairs and heard every word I said.

“I’ll be needing help in the evenings at my place for the next day. The weekends just give her a break. This girl needs to be around young people.” I smiled real big. “My boy will pick me and her up at the dock this evening. I live on Sapelo Island, ma’am, in case you don’t remember.”

“Yes, that’s right. And you have a son, Ada? I thought you never married.”

“He be close family and staying with me now. He’s going to school to be a lawyer.”

Miss Lydia smiled. “Is that what you want to do, Shelly?”

Lord help, that poor girl looked confused like she hadn’t had many choices. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll stay with her.” Shelly cut a look at Miss Mary Beth’s spirit still standing on the stairs.

“Well, that’s settled. Faith and I will go choose our rooms. Ada, you
fill Shelly in with what she needs to know.” Miss Lydia started up the stairs again and walked right through Miss Mary Beth Clark’s spirit, but that Faith girl walked around the haint. Lord help me, she could see the ghost too.

“She’s a fine-looking for a haint,” Shelly said.

“Oh yes, she be fine, all right, and she thought that when she was alive. It’s probably what got her killed.” I turned to leave.

“You know her?” Shelly asked. “I never know the spirits that come see me.”

“I guess you could say I knew that one. As you get older, you’ll know some of the haints that come your way.” I walked back to the kitchen. “We ain’t got time for an old-home week with them kind of spirits. We got to get this supper fixed. I leave here every day at five and no later. Today be Friday, I’m going to take you to Sapelo with me. And I like to cook supper for my boy.”

She nodded and followed me into the kitchen.

A
DA LEE TINE
was one of the strangest colored women I’d ever met, but then I’d only known Nada. She wore a feather and four colored beads tied around her neck with a piece of leather. Her dress didn’t have a bit of shape and was gray with no color at all. On her head was a black scarf. But it was the way she watched me—like I was the most interesting thing she’d seen. She was bent under the sink in the kitchen when someone came knocking.

“Get that door, Shelly.”

A tall, lanky colored boy not much older than me looked surprised. “I was looking for Ada Lee Tine.” He held a big wire basket with two horrible-looking creatures inside.

“Sam!” Ada yelled as she stood up. “You got my lobsters.” She stepped in front of me and took the wire basket. “I guess it’s a dollar apiece, like usual?”

“For you, Ada Lee.” He smiled.

“Get on out of here.” She laughed and shut the door. “He be one of the fishermen,” she explained. “Come on over here.” Ada placed the wire basket on the table. She checked on a big, tall pot full of water, heating on the stove. “Now, this here is lobster. God’s most beautiful creatures.”

I frowned.

“Oh, don’t you be making them kind of faces. I’m going to teach you to cook them. We’ll have some of our own tonight and later take us a walk on the beach. You like the ocean?”

“Never seen it, ma’am.” The water began to steam.

She shook her head. “Ain’t nothing about you that’s right.” Her smile was big. “Next week we’ll stay in my aunt Hattie’s old house. She’s been dead for a few years now, but I use her home when I got to be here in Darien. Never seen her spirit.”

I let a breath out and nodded.

She put her hand into the cage and brought out one of them ugly creatures. “He’s going to make a fine, fine supper. Don’t you think?”

“He be ugly,” I said.

She laughed. “Yes, ma’am, they are ugly creatures, but they taste better than a king’s supper.” She lowered the thing into the pot of hot water. A hissing cry filled the kitchen.

I must have looked scared, ’cause Ada Lee Tine shook her head. “It ain’t really crying, child. Just sounds like it.” This woman had the darkest skin I’d ever seen. “You know how to fry cooked corn?” She pulled five ears of corn out of a cloth bag.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. You be useful.” She handed me the ears. “Then get to it. The butter’s in the icebox. We leave here at five on the dot.”

Mrs. Dobbins came into the kitchen. “You can stay here if you want, Ada. It won’t bother me to have the extra company.”

Ada Lee Tine kind of laughed. “No, ma’am. Like I said, it be Friday. I go to the island on the weekend.” Then she looked at Mrs.
Dobbins real serious. “This is the Ridge, Miss Lydia. I ain’t never staying here after dark.”

Faith came into the kitchen. “Can’t Shelly just stay here?”

That’s when I understood I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to go with this strange woman and find out what else I could know from her. “I’ll go with Ada.”

Ada smiled at me like I passed some kind of test. “We have some business this weekend, and it ain’t cooking and cleaning here on the mainland.” She laughed.

I thought Mrs. Dobbins would puff up, but she smiled real big. “Shelly needs a good adventure.”

There we was all acting like we was on a vacation, just happy as could be except for Faith. I think that girl really wanted me to stay. Well, even if she was Arleen Brown, I wasn’t going to be her friend and babysit her either.

“Go on and wash up, you two. I’m going to leave you enough food for a army. You can fend for yourself for two days. Can’t you?”

Mrs. Dobbins still wore that silly grin. “Yes. That’ll be our adventure.” She reached over and squeezed Faith’s hand. I don’t ever remember seeing that woman touch Faith. It’s what mamas was supposed to do, but Mrs. Dobbins never showed no kind of touching in front of Nada and me. But she was softening to this new place. And that was the best thing of all. If she started loving this place with her whole heart, maybe Nada would come live here too. And maybe just maybe that silly old Arleen would let go of the real Faith. And I still didn’t know why I cared.

When they was gone to wash up, Ada looked at me. “You got you two doozies there.”

My cheeks heated. “They ain’t mine.”

She laughed. “I know just how you feel. You’re here now, and we’re going to make the best of it until you go home. I’m going to teach you all I know about cooking and the island. Two of the things I love best. We’re going to have us a feast on the island with my boy. You ever been on a real boat?”

I laughed ’cause the answer to that question stuck in my throat. A real boat.

“You going to have you a fine time, girl. And since you live alongside them folks, I got a feeling you need it.”

This trip wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Maybe I wouldn’t even bother with reading Armetta’s stupid old book. Maybe she was just stirring stuff up. Nope, I’d put that thing away and not think about it no more. The thing wasn’t nothing but her selfish way of getting her story told. How could a story save anyone? Anyway, Armetta couldn’t even bother me in Darien. But I kept thinking on that pretty haint upstairs.

I
WOULD WATCH MAMA
for the longest in her garden when I was a little thing. The way Shelly’s mama sat with her legs folded under her and dug her fingers into the fresh dirt made me miss being alive. Mama had been the cook in the main house and loved her garden better than anything, just like Shelly’s mama.

When Pastor found out the womenfolk was gone, Lord help, he got all upset and took off down to Asheville, probably hunting down the sheriff. But not before he threatened Shelly’s mama for playing like she didn’t know anything. But still the air turned softer, easier, almost happy with him gone. And a little tune no one alive could hear scooted through the wind. If I hadn’t known a whole lot better, I would have believed he was gone for good. Shelly’s mama had the strength to stand alone on the mountain. She could face Pastor head-on. But to stop him, it would take a whole lot more than a
strong colored mountain witch and a white granny woman. Maybe a little craziness.

“You’re here. I feel you.” Amanda’s words was soft, kind. She had never tried to talk to me before, not even when I blew in her ear that night her boy ran off. Nothing could have stopped him. His leaving was written across them stars in the sky. “You’re the girl spirit, the lost one. Shelly’s gone. I sent her away. No need to worry. She be safe for now.”

“Nobody safe.”

“Maybe, but I had to try. He’s gone.” She clipped mint leaves and dropped them in her basket.

“Not for long.”

“I guess you be right.”

“Can you see me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “My sight is weak as water. Sometimes if a spirit is real strong, I can hear them.” She moved to her lavender bushes that had seen better days. “The story is that you be good with growing things. The flowers still turn out real pretty in that old cemetery every spring.”

“It be my home.”

Her hands looked much older than her face. “I miss New Orleans bad enough to cry sometimes. I guess that’s where my spirit will go when I pass.” Shelly’s mama looked out to the west.

“Maybe you’ll go on into the light ’cause you’ll be finished in this world. That be the best thing. I didn’t because my story is all tangled.”

“Depends on what happens before I die. Lots of untold secrets sit on my back.” She gave a short laugh.

“Your back sure be straight if it’s carrying a load.”

She looked in my direction. “You come when someone is going to die.”

A tiredness soaked me all the way through like I still had bones and skin. “I’m stuck to him, always have been.”

She nodded. “You was here when Will left.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did he die?” Her fingers shook.

We all got our weaknesses, the place where we feel the hole open and suck us in. “Not yet. We all got to die, though.”

“What you mean?” She sounded angry.

“Just what I said. None of our bodies will last forever.”